


bring a friend this holiday

by cupcakeb



Series: easier when life gets hard [3]
Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, First Christmas, it's time for xmas fluff, this entire 'verse is so wholesome I couldn't not write a wholesome xmas one shot about them ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27914929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupcakeb/pseuds/cupcakeb
Summary: Rebeka doesn’t realize how emotionally stunted the three people she lives with are until it’s late November, and she mentions Christmas and gets absolutely no reaction from them whatsoever.Like... It’s about to be Christmas. That’s the best fucking time of the year. Is that how that song goes? Whatever. When she mentions that the holidays are coming up during dinner, Carla stares straight ahead, her eyes narrowed. Samuel makes an awkward joke to change the subject, and Valerio is way too quick to laugh about it, even though he usually enjoys letting Samu’s silly jokes fall flat.She's gonna have to come up with a plan. No one’s skipping Christmas on her watch.
Relationships: Carla Rosón Caleruega/Samuel García Domínguez, Rebeca "Rebe" de Bormujo Ávalos & Carla Rosón Caleruega, Rebeca "Rebe" de Bormujo Ávalos/Valerio Montesinos Hendrich
Series: easier when life gets hard [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941667
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	bring a friend this holiday

**Author's Note:**

> you don’t need to read the other two stories in this series to follow the plot of this but it’ll probably be a lot more fun if you do!   
> ([1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25957147) & [2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26683777))
> 
> the title is from [Candy Cane Lane](https://open.spotify.com/track/4KevTcBXEIYxXVyPE78XXm?si=aPXwEsMPRoi1pq_ukyJmHw)

In her defense, they hide it well.  
  
It takes Rebeka almost six months of officially living with her ridiculous boyfriend and the other two weirdos she calls friends to realize it. She had an inkling, sure, but _wow_.  
  
She doesn’t realize how emotionally stunted the three people she lives with are until it’s late November, and she mentions Christmas and gets absolutely no reaction from them whatsoever.

Like... It’s about to be Christmas. That’s the best fucking time of the year. Is that how that song goes? Whatever. When she mentions that the holidays are coming up during dinner, Carla stares straight ahead, her eyes narrowed. Samu makes an awkward joke to change the subject, and Valerio is way too quick to laugh about it, even though he usually enjoys letting Samu’s silly jokes fall flat.

How is she gonna enjoy decorating and baking cookies and drinking too much mulled wine on their little rooftop patio while they’re wrapped in multiple blankets if all three of her favorite people are apparently the Grinch personified? Fuck.

She’s gonna have to come up with a plan.  
  
~~~  
  
So things have been going alright since graduation. University is actually pretty cool, and she likes her current living arrangement, especially because she can pawn Valerio off to Samu and hang out with Carla when she’s annoyed with him.

She’s decided on a degree in architecture, ‘cause she likes drawing shit and she’s always been pretty good at building houses on Sims, and she’s not awful at math, which is an annoyingly big part of her degree, unfortunately. It’s been like three months, so the jury’s still out on whether this is her professional calling, but she doesn’t hate her classes, which she considers a success.

Samuel’s taking a few pre-law classes, but she’s got a feeling he’s probably gonna declare a different major soon. His very idealistic idea of the legal system was shattered a long time ago, when his brother nearly got convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, and he doesn’t seem too hellbent on being the one to change all that from the inside. And like, he’s her friend and she loves him and all but he’s really not the smartest cookie. Law is fucking complicated; Samu struggles with basic deductive reasoning sometimes. Carla always jokes he should just go to culinary school since he’s such a fucking bad cook, and he tends to look a little too offended to not at least begrudgingly be considering it.

Valerio is... special. Look, she obviously fucking loves him, or else she wouldn’t be with him, but he’s such a fucking weirdo sometimes. Nobody expected him to suddenly be into academics after high school, and Rebe can’t say she’s surprised he never ended up enrolling anywhere. He’s got a trust fund to live off of, thanks to a very uncomfortable conversation with his grandparents, and a bizarre interest in yoga to explore further, so that’s what he spends his time doing. It leaves him with plenty of time to cook for her, and his skills in the kitchen are getting better and better each day, so she’s not complaining. She’d never admit it, but she kind of loves when he does shit for her.  
  
Then there’s Carla, who’s probably had the shittiest time of it lately. Through some weird backdoor deal her parents made years ago, she got to access her trust fund when she turned eighteen in June — why the fuck does everyone but her have a fucking trust fund? — but that apparently comes with the responsibility of now legally owning a significant stake in the family wineries, which aren’t doing too well, so she’s mostly been running herself rampant, stretching herself way too thin between the winery shit, university and trying to have some semblance of a social life outside of all that.  
  
Everyone’s been pretty busy with their own shit in their own way. They deserve to have a nice Christmas, don’t they? It just feels right.  
  
Carla looks at her like she’s fucking lost it when she tells her they should get the boys together and do some Christmas baking this weekend. “This isn’t a hallmark movie, Rebe,” the blonde says, then crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Besides, I hate Christmas. Can’t we just skip it?”

Skip Christmas? She wants them to skip Christmas? What the actual fuck.

“Blondie, if you ever suggest that again I’m packing my bags. You’ll never see me again.”

That gets a giggle out of Carla, and really, she’s glad she cheered her up a little. It’s been a pain, seeing her friend be so obviously miserable. “Just know if you leave me alone with Samu and Val, I _will_ find you and I _will_ kill you.”

She lets Carla pick a movie on Netflix, and when she’s sure she’s distracted, she orders a bunch of random Christmas decor on Amazon on her phone.

No one’s skipping Christmas on her watch.

~~~

She gets a tree.  
  
Any good Christmas starts with a solid, tall chunk of pine needle. It’s important to get the basics right.  
  
When she calls Valerio from the lobby of their building and asks him to come down and help her carry it, he sounds less than enthused, but he’s downstairs a minute later anyway, kind of staring at the sheer size of the tree in shock.  
  
“Where the fuck are we gonna put that thing?”  
  
God, how dare he call it a thing? It’s fucking Christmas magic personified. If, you know, a tree was, like, a person or whatever. You get the point; she’s bad with words.  
  
She rolls her eyes at him, then motions for him to pick up the tree, and he laughs. “What, you’re not even gonna help?”

No, she isn’t. She made it this far; he can fulfill his manly duty and carry stuff for her. Maybe it’s not very feminist of her but having a man do things for her is hot. Having Valerio do things for her is her absolute biggest kink.

They get the tree upstairs, and she makes him move their dining table over to the middle of the room to clear the corner next to the windows — it’s the absolute perfect tree spot. She obviously got a tree stand too; she’s not a fucking amateur. Together they lift it into the stand, then fasten it and cut away the net.

She’s kind of proud of herself; she picked a really fucking nice tree. It’s got curves in all the right places and it’s a really pretty green. Voluptuous pine should be its own genre of tree. (Are there genres of trees? Fuck knows. There should be.) 

Valerio hugs her from behind, then leans down to kiss her neck. “What’s with the crazy Christmas obsession?”

She pushes back against him and smiles to herself. “What’s with the weird indifference towards the most wonderful time of the year?”

He doesn’t answer her question, so she’s pretty sure she gets to ignore his, too.

~~~

Samu gets drunk with her one night when Valerio’s at some yoga group bullshit meeting and Carla’s off at her business school department Christmas dinner.  
  
They’re on the couch, and he’s wistfully pointing at the Christmas tree in the corner, fairy lights flashing in the dimly lit room.  
  
“I love Christmas,” he says, slurring his words a little. “But now that my mom and Nano are gone, it’s just weird. What’s Christmas without family?”  
  
She tunes out the rest of what he’s saying, too busy realizing she’s cracked the case. Oh my god. So _this_ is why they’re all being such idiots about the holidays? They’re afraid to be _lonely_.  
  
And sure, she could give some grand speech about how they’ll make the holidays nice, or how they can spend Christmas with the family they _chose_ , but she’s pretty sure Samu doesn’t need that from her right now, so she just nods and changes the subject.  
  
~~~  
  
Carla can probably handle being confronted with facts, so Rebe tries her first. Out of the three people she lives with, she seems like the most levelheaded person.  
  
“Are you being indifferent about Christmas ‘cause you no longer speak to your parents and you’re worried you’ll be sad and lonely over the holidays?”  
  
The blonde stares at her, then snorts out a laugh and lifts her cup of mulled wine to her lips. They’re at the Christmas market at Plaza Mayor, because Rebe refused to stop asking her about going until Carla finally relented.  
  
“Wow, thanks for painting such a bleak picture,” she says, then glances at Rebeka’s empty cup and grabs her by the arm to get in line for a refill. “I’ve always hated Christmas.”  
  
That’s... Wow. She really doesn’t mean to be dramatic when she gasps in genuine horror. “There’s no way you’ve always hated Christmas.”  
  
Carla laughs. “You’ve clearly never had dinner with my parents. Christmas is that, but worse.”  
  
“Well, you won’t have to see them this year! We’ll make it fun! Fucking… Orphans’ Christmas, or whatever…”  
  
If she didn’t know Carla uncomfortably well by now, she’d think the way her mouth ticks up into a slightly condescending smile meant she’s not on board with any of this. But she does, so she knows the girl’s just, like, amused. Trying to stay serious but actually kinda into all this. She’s not nearly as calm, cool and collected as people give her credit for.  
  
“What the fuck is an orphans’ Christmas? None of our parents are dead.”  
  
She’ll take any opportunity she can get to make a morbid joke, so… “Hey, bitch, speak for yourself!”  
  
And yeah, Sandra isn’t dead, thank fucking god. She doesn’t need the added emotional trauma of having no family left in the world at fucking eighteen, but they also don’t really make a big deal about Christmas. Sandra won’t care whether Rebe spends the holidays with her, but she can tell Val, Carla and Samu need someone to be around. She’s more than happy to play Santa’s little helper.

Anyway. Carla chuckles, then rolls her eyes at the giddy expression on Rebe‘s face and finally gives in.

“How are we gonna play this?”

Well. She’s got a few ideas. Now that she’s found a partner in crime, she might just be able to pull them off.

~~~

Samu does a double-take when he walks into the living room and sees Rebe and Carla in cozy ugly Christmas sweaters, decorating the tree. She grins at him as she watches him walk over to Carla, an amused frown on his face.

“What’s gotten into you?”

The blonde shrugs as she turns around to kiss his cheek. “We need a little festive cheer in this apartment.”

Getting Carla to be into this whole operation Christmas fun was so easy, she’s got a feeling the girl’s been dying to actually let herself relax a little for a while. Maybe she’s just been waiting for an excuse.

They finish decorating the tree, then make the boys watch one of those god-awful Netflix Christmas movies with them, and when Valerio makes fun of Vanessa Hudgens’ awful English accent, she elbows him and cuddles closer to him.

“Don’t you dare question the impeccable elocution of Lady Margaret of Montenaro.”

He makes fun of her for actually being into this shit all night, but like, whatever. She likes what she likes.

She loves watching shitty TV with these three.

~~~

“Hey, we thought you two should be in charge of cooking on Christmas Eve.”

The second the words leave Carla’s lips, Samu breaks into a giant grin, like he’s been waiting for this moment all his life. They might regret this decision. Then again, chances are he can follow a recipe, right? Maybe Valerio can keep him in check. Nobody wants to have microwaved leftovers for Christmas dinner.

Under the table, Valerio nudges her knee with his and smiles at her.

The next few days are spent replying to what feels like a hundred texts from Samu, sending them possible Christmas menus and recipes. He’s up before any of them on Saturday, even though he’s usually a late sleeper, and when she walks into the living room, he’s sat on the couch with his laptop, browsing recipes as some cooking channel YouTube video plays on TV.

“You’re taking this seriously,” she observes on her way to the kitchen for coffee. “Good.”

He rolls his eyes at her, but when she comes back with her coffee and sits down next to him, he talks her through some of the ideas he’s come up with and it’s actually super cute to see him this excited about Christmas, even if it’s just because he wants to prove a point about his cooking.

Valerio gets in the shower with her after breakfast and giggles as he hugs her from behind. “You’ve really sold them on Christmas,” he says, wrapping an arm around her waist. “What are you gonna do to get me this excited?”

She turns around in his arms and runs a hand down his chest. “I think I can think of something.”

~~~

Of course, all it takes to convince Valerio to like Christmas is the promise of mistletoe and a party.

“Let’s have some people over on the twenty-third,” she suggests. “Most people will be back in town and it’ll give us an excuse to get drunk.”

Val’s mellowed out a lot. He stays away from drugs — except for weed, but that obviously hardly counts — and he doesn’t binge drink much anymore, which is a little weird for her. That used to be their thing. The whole new age-y yoga shit he’s into has made him realize he should probably be a little nicer to his body, so he’s been watching what he eats and trying not to get blackout drunk twice a week, which she supposes is fair enough.

They’re home alone, watching some nature documentary he wanted to see.

“How many people are you thinking?”

That’s an oddly considerate question for him to ask. It’s like he’s actually thinking about the logistics of this whole thing, instead of just winging it; kind of bizarre.

“I dunno, like, fifteen? It’s not like we know too many people. Let’s invite some of the old murder gang—,“ yes, that’s what she calls her high school classmates, “— and each pick like one or two other people we met this year that are cool. You can invite your guru.”

That’s a cheap dig, and he instantly reaches for her, tickling her side. She screeches, then moves into his lap, and yeah okay, maybe they can take a break from Christmas planning to take advantage of the fact that they’ve got the apartment to themselves.

“Themed drinks,” he says when she’s just about to doze off later. He’s drumming his fingers on her shoulder, and it’s annoying enough to keep her awake so she’s pretty sure that means he expects a response. “We need Christmas inspired cocktails.”

Rebe groans, then presses a kiss to his neck and says, “You’re in charge, go for it.”

He tightens his arm around her and hums.

~~~

“This Christmas party is legit,” Guzmán’s donning a reindeer headband, a drink in hand. “Nice touch with the drinks. Who came up with Rudolph the red-nosed Rum-deer?”

She grins up at Valerio, who looks genuinely proud. It's fucking adorable. “That was all him.”

It really is a great party. The Christmas theme is over the top enough, it helps gloss over any awkwardness they might otherwise have to deal with since they’ve barely seen most of these people since graduation. Inviting a few of their new university friends was the right call because it ensured this whole night won’t just be spent delving into crazy high school nostalgia.

The gift that keeps on giving, though, is the mistletoe Valerio fixed to the ceiling in all kinds of random spots. All night, he keeps randomly pushing people under it mid-conversation, and the memory of seeing Samuel and Guzmán awkwardly glance at each other for a whole minute before leaning in for a quick peck will probably keep her laughing well into the new year.

He traps her under it with Carla at one point, grinning at Samu like they planned this, and she rolls her eyes before she pulls Carla close for a proper kiss. They may as well give the boys a show. When they look over at them after, both of their boyfriends look a little too dazed, and she makes a silly joke to break the weird sexual tension.

(“Might just leave you for her for good if she kisses like that, damn.”)

By three in the morning, everyone’s finally gone home — except for Guzmán, who’s passed out on their couch — and the four of them are laughing as they regard his sleeping form.

“Should we wake him up?” Samu asks, even though he doesn’t seem too concerned, judging by the way he’s pulling Carla closer to play with her hair.

Rebe shakes her head. “It’s Christmas, let him fucking sleep.” 

She’s glad their bedrooms don’t share a wall because Valerio is a little too into dirty talk tonight, and she’s not sure Carla and Samuel would enjoy listening to him talk about how fucking hot the two of them looked kissing under the mistletoe.

~~~

Secret Santa with just four people was a stupid idea, but Samu seemed so excited and _she_ was excited to see him show some initiative when it comes to Christmas, so she agreed to it.

As it turns out, that was a big mistake — Carla is impossible to shop for.

They didn’t agree on a budget, because they knew no one would stick to it anyway, and yet it still took her several days to finally think of a gift idea she didn’t hate. She prides herself on being an amazing gift giver; a generic gift simply wasn’t gonna cut it.

The Kate Spade planner and matching water bottle is the best thing she could come up with. Carla is constantly complaining about how hard it is to keep track of all of the shit she needs to be doing for the wineries, and school, and she’s also infamously bad at drinking enough water, so the water bottle is, like, Rebeka’s way of showing her she cares about her well-being.

It’s not like Carla is really hurting for any material things; the whole point of the gift is that it’s meant to be a nice gesture, a nudge to help her friend optimize her schedule and take care of herself. She doesn’t expect a deeply emotional reaction, but she figures it’ll probably be well received.

Carla cries when she opens it. Not, like, full-on sobs but she definitely sees her wipe away a few tears and her voice sounds all choked up when she thanks her. It really must’ve been a fucking horrible few months for her if such a small, caring gesture can make her tear up.

Anyway. Neither of them is a big fan of emotional outbursts, and she can tell Carla is hella uncomfortable with this little display of vulnerability, so she hugs her and doesn’t mention it again.

Samu got her a book about being the mom friend — very fucking funny — and then a really nice fluffy fleece blanket because she always complains about how they keep the fucking thermostat too low. She’s gotten significantly worse secret Santa presents over the years.

Val gets a whole new yoga outfit from Carla which he is instantly totally obsessed with, and if he didn’t look so fucking cute getting all giddy and excited like this, she might consider being a little jealous at how this probably upstages the gift she got him. It’s not part of secret Santa, but she wasn’t gonna just not get her boyfriend a Christmas present, right? If he knows what’s good for him, he better at least pretend to like it when she gives it to him in their room later.

That leaves Valerio’s present for Samuel, which is just an incredibly expensive watch. “So you can fit in with all your new law school snob friends,” he says, and Samu hesitates for a second, like he’s unsure whether he can accept such a generous gift. It’s the most expensive thing out of the gifts they’ve gotten each other by a mile, but it’s not like money is a real concept to Valerio.

“Just say thanks and fucking put it on,” Rebe tells him, and Samu finally allows himself to smile and show some excitement. It really is a fucking nice watch, not that she’s an expert on watches. She doesn’t even wanna know how much it was. “Looks nice, right?”

Carla scoots closer to Samu — they’re inexplicably perched on the hardwood floors near the Christmas tree for this gift exchange — and reaches for his wrist. “Now I can finally take you to officially meet my Dad.”

The idea of that is so absurd, they all burst out laughing.

“You know what, maybe I don’t want the watch,” Samu chuckles, putting an arm around Carla.  
  
They have dinner after, and Samu puts his new watch to good use when he roasts the lamb to perfection. The meat is tender, and the potatoes have just the right amount of bite to them and the whole meal is so good, no one dares to joke about his terrible cooking skills. He looks way too pleased with himself.  
  
It’s easily her favorite Christmas in almost a decade.   
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> find me [on tumblr](http://cupcakeb.tumblr.com/)


End file.
